FRB as Pulsar Lightning

Abstract

There are striking phenomenological similarities between Fast Radio Bursts and lightning in the Earth's and planetary atmospheres. Both have very low duty factors, $\lesssim 10^{-8}$--$10^{-5}$ for FRB and (very roughly) $\sim 10^{-4}$ for the main return strokes in an active thundercloud. Lightning occurs in an electrified insulating atmosphere when a conducting path is created by and permits current flow. FRB may occur in neutron star magnetospheres whose plasma is believed to be divided by vacuum gaps. Vacuum is a perfect insulator unless electric fields are sufficient for electron-positron pair production by curvature radiation, a high-energy analogue of electrostatic breakdown in an insulating gas. FRB may be "electrars" powered by the release of stored electrostatic energy, counterparts to Soft Gamma Repeaters powered by the release of stored magnetostatic energy (magnetars). This frees pulsar FRB models from the constraint that their power not exceed the instantaneous spin-down power. Energetic constraints imply that the sources of more energetic FRB have shorter spin-down lifetimes, perhaps shorter than the three years over which FRB 121102 has been observed to repeat.

5 pp, added references and discussion

References in corpus (5)

• The direct localization of a fast radio burst and its host
• The Repeating Fast Radio Burst FRB 121102 as Seen on Milliarcsecond Angular Scales
• Radio Emission Signatures in the Crab Pulsar
• Revisiting the dispersion measure of fast radio bursts associated with gamma-ray burst afterglows
• Are Crab Nanoshots Schwinger Sparks?

Cited by in corpus (26)

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• Fast radio burst source properties and curvature radiation model
• The Physics of Fast Radio Bursts
• Future Cosmological Constraints from Fast Radio Bursts
• Fast Radio Bursts
• Fast radio bursts from activities of neutron stars newborn in BNS mergers: offset, birth rate and observational properties
• Coherent curvature radiation and Fast Radio Bursts
• Coherent Plasma-Curvature Radiation in FRB
• FRB as Products of Accretion Disc Funnels
• Are Fast Radio Bursts Made By Neutron Stars?
• Luminosity-duration relations and luminosity functions of repeating and non-repeating fast radio bursts
• On the magnetospheric origin of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts
• FRB Energetics and Sources
• A search for FRB 121102-like persistent radio-luminous sources -- Candidates and implications for the FRB rate and searches
• Fast radio burst counterparts and their implications for the central engine
• A Comprehensive Analysis on Repeating Fast Radio Bursts
• Prompt X-ray emission from Fast Radio Bursts -- Upper limits with AstroSat
• Constraining Parameters in Pulsar Models of Repeating FRB 121102 with High-Energy Follow-up Observations
• Statistical properties of the repeating fast radio burst source FRB 121102
• The Cosmic Evolution of Fast Radio Bursts Inferred from the CHIME/FRB Baseband Catalog 1
• Periodic Fast Radio Bursts from Young Neutron Stars
• Constraints on Pulsed Emission Model for Repeating FRB 121102
• Upper Field Strength Limit of Fast Radio Bursts
• Do FRB Mark Dark Core Collapse?
• A Generic Model for Persistent Radio Source around Fast Radio Bursts
• FRB 121102: a star quake-induced repeater?